The newest mural in downtown Aurora represents a homecoming in several ways.
For artist Max Sansing, it’s personal.
He learned how to draw and paint from his uncle, Aurora resident Nazree Taylor, who learned from Sansing’s father. The artist’s father died when Sansing was 14, and “Uncle Naz” took over his art training.
“I’ve been coming out here for years,” Sansing said Tuesday, as the city of Aurora officially cut the ribbon on his new mural in Mundy Park, facing The Venue, Aurora’s downtown live music facility.
“To be here and paint in his town so he can see it every day is awesome,” Sansing said.
Taylor admitted he did not have all that much to do with the mural.
“Mostly I sat in the grass and yelled at him,” he said. “I stay on him, tell him don’t quit, keep going.”
Sansing, based in Chicago, has become a muralist known across the country for his style of mixing photorealism images with the colors of street art. While his work has been featured in galleries in Chicago, New York and Miami, he also has done a number of large murals across the country, similar to the one now in Aurora.
A little more than a year ago, Jenn Byrne, Aurora’s Public Art director, approached Mayor Richard Irvin with the idea of commissioning Sansing to do the downtown mural.
Irvin said Tuesday he thought it was “an amazing idea.”
“It’s bringing the blues home to the city of Aurora,” Irvin said. “Today Max is helping us to remember who we are in the city of Aurora.”
Aurora’s well-documented historic connection to the blues goes back to the 1930s when Bluebird Records held recording sessions in the former Sky Club at the top of Leland Tower, at Galena Boulevard and Stolp Avenue.
Stolp still bears the honorary name “Blues Alley,” in honor of those sessions, and Aurora holds a Blues Fest every summer.
Sansing’s mural includes the faces of blues legends B.B. King, Koko Taylor, Buddy Guy, Tampa Red and Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Several of those internationally-known blues musicians have played in Aurora, and now another internationally-known artist, Max Sansing, has plied his trade in the city, too.
But for Naz Taylor, who has his own degree in commercial art from Oklahoma State University, the mural will be a daily reminder of time spent in artistic pursuits with his nephew.
“I’m too proud of him,” he said. “Too proud.”
slord@tribpub.com
